Build Log #2: Acquiring hardware

As I talked about in the last post my previous build was becoming outdated so I’m going to do some upgrades to both the hardware and the water cooling! Down below you’ll find a overview of the products and tools I’ll be using in this build as well as some comments and thoughts on the build!

Case

If you’ve visited LadderRoom.com or our Facebook page by the time of our very first posts, you’d’ve noticed that I first intended to use my Corsair Carbide Air 540 for this build.. However after a series of events (me sucking at spray painting being one), I’m now getting the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ATX Tempered Glass. This case is probably the best looking case on the market and is also a great case to build in! For a second I was glancing at the Dark Base Pro 900, but it did’t appeal to me in the same way that the Evolv’s tempered glass did why I’m going with Phanteks latest!

Corsair Carbide Air 540

Phanteks Enthoo Evolv

Internal components

The old system was built upon a Intel i5 3570k paired with an ASRock Extreme 6 motherboard and 4×4 gigabyte of Corsair Vengeance 1600 Mhz DDR3 ram providing solid performance in most of the games I played.

The new build will house a Intel i7 6700k on an ASUS Z170 Deluxe motherboard which will be accompanied by 4×4 gigabyte of Kingston HyperX Predator 3000 MHz DDR4 ram. On the storage end I’ll keep my 250 gigabyte Samsung 850 pro SSD as my primary drive and a mechanical 1000 gigabyte HDD as secondary. I expect to see a huge boost in performance with the above components once everything is up and running!

Water cooling

The custom water cooling loop will be a single loop cooling both the CPU and GPU. As you see in the list below I’ll be reusing the radiator, the cpu and the gpu block as well as the pump from my prior build. I’m however replacing the reservoir and I might be adding another radiator to get a bit more cooling capacity.. Not quiet sure yet though.

Could’t resist the urge to open and assemble the pump and the new reservoir top so here’s some pictures from the process.. I think the sleeving turned out ok but since the case will be transparent on both sides I’m most likely to end up redoing the connector end of the cables..

Pump Sleeving

Pump disassembly

Cable sleeving

Paracord. I’m going with paracord sleeving for this build after some serious consideration mostly concerning pricing and availability of some of the alternatives! I actually received the sleeving shipment I ordered from China so I’ll get you an review later on even if I’m not using it in this build.

Tools

Well, apparently you need proper tools for cable sleeving. Bought and tried a cheap crimper from the local hardware store the other day, and you know what? It didn’t work. I’ll be getting a better crimping tool now which i hope is as good as everyone says…